Archive for December, 2008

Monster Cables are a Scam – Part 2

Posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008

I just thought that I’d add to my last post on HDMI cables with an analogy I thought of. To put it simply, the notion that there will be any difference in picture quality between a $5 HDMI cable and a $400 Monster cable is exactly the same as saying that putting your videos on a more expensive USB drive will make them look and sound better, or that a more expensive memory card in your digital camera would make you photos higher resolution – that is, completely ridiculous, and completely wrong, for obvious reasons.

Simply put, all of these mediums are just moving a bunch of ones and zeros. Given that describing a one or a zero from a wave is far less prone to error than an analog signal (I’ll put up a diagram of this soon), you can be pretty much assured that your cable, USB drive or memory card will transfer the data exactly as transmitted.

So to sum up, Monster Cables are a downright scam, (as are any other company that sells pointlessly expensive digital cables to consumers), and essentially all the claims that they make on their packaging (like better quality picture, richer sound) are all false. Of course, if you ask the salesperson at the local department store, they’ll try to flog the most expensive cable to you, and make up implausible (and wrong) reasons about why you should buy the more expensive one. But remember that they are just out to get the commission, and most of them will tell lies to sell it to you – unless they are genuinely taken in by the scam.

How many seconds until Christmas, I hear you ask?

Posted on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

I whipped together a quick little application which counts down until Christmas tonight – but it is quite unlike most that you see around the place. I’ve dispensed with the needless and imprecise method of showing the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds, and just display the important stuff – the exact number of seconds until 12:00 AM on Christmas morning.

Christmas Countdown Program

Download Download ChristmasCountdown
Requires .Net Framework 2.0 or Mono